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The Glass Jaw

It used to be, and maybe it still is the case, that boys learned about bullies on the playground. There was always some kid, who would push around the other kids. The lesson kids learned was that merely standing up to the bully was usually enough. In some cases, you might have to duke it out, but no matter the result, the bully would leave you alone after it. What makes the bully possible is moral authority. They present themselves as the natural ruler of the rest. If everyone accepts it, then the bully gets to run the yard.

In much the same way, the slave owner has to maintain a moral authority in order to keep his slaves from revolting or running off. The whole point of slavery is cheap labor. If the slave owner has to employ an army to keep his slaves under control and on the plantation, there’s no point in having slaves. He would be better served by hired men. In order for slavery to work, the slaves must accept their natural condition. Like the bully, the slave owner may be outnumbered, but he has the force of moral authority.

One of the least remarked upon aspects of the collapse of Soviet communism was just how peaceful and swift it was in the end. The Poles standing up to their rulers broke the spell. In 1980, Lech Wałęsa scaled the fence at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, leading a strike against the government. Within a decade, the Soviet empire would collapse and Wałęsa would be elected president of Poland. In other words, the commies were morally and spiritually exhausted and they could not take a punch.

I thought about that when the little guy with the goofy haircut decked the Antifa girl at that Berkeley riot. Everything about her world made sense right up until she took a right cross to the puss and fell to the ground. All she had to do was show up in the right outfit and all the bad people would go away. Then, her bluff was called. The bad man was not intimidated. She no longer had moral authority over him. Her after action comments strongly suggest she had some sort of epiphany on the way to the ground.

The thing is though, the whole Antifa movement seems to have fallen apart after that event. Poor old Gavin McInness is begging them to show up at his events, but all he’s getting is some cranky coeds and a few old hippies. In one of life’s many ironies, the anti-fascists had to manufacture fascists to fight and now the alleged fascists are forced to invent anti-fascist that they can fight. Gavin is going to have to find a new act. It turns out that the Prog street warriors have a glass jaw. They can’t take a punch and they know it.

His post on Moldbug is revealing for a number of reasons. For starters, Moldbug has not posted in years. His last serious philosophical posting was half a dozen years ago. He and neo-reaction were a big deal on-line a decade ago. It’s not quite disco, but addressing it now in a serious way is a lot like demanding the record stores stop selling Bee Gee’s albums. What his post reveals, more than anything, is that he and the rest of the Buckley Mystery Cult have not been paying attention for a long time.

The longer post is a more serious attempt to address the many boogeymen and hobgoblins that haunt the minds of Buckley Conservatives. His essay reads like it was written by a committee. He spends thousands of words stroking various aspects of Conservative Inc, for no purpose other than flattery. When he gets into specific topics popular on the Dissident Right, he reveals a depth of ignorance that suggests stupidity has mass. His bit on IQ reveals he is a man who does not know what he does not know.

Whenever you are charged with defending the status quo against criticism, your job is to re-argue the case for the establishment. The rightness of the prevailing order creates its own moral authority, thus reducing even legitimate criticisms to mere quibbles. What’s striking about Steorts’ piece is he struggles to describe what it is he is defending, much less defend it. After 7500 words, the reader is just left with the image of a fussy prig, crinkling his nose up, as if he just caught wind of a bad odor.

For as long as anyone reading this has been alive, Buckley Conservatives have functioned as a palace guard. They defended the status quo by acting as a buffer between critics and the Progressive elites. At the same time, they served as a conduit for middle-class white grievances and objections. Taxes are too high! Government is too big! Pop culture is damaging to bourgeois values! That sort of thing. They were in the passenger seat of Progressivism yelling “slow down!” as the car zoomed forward.

For good or ill, their source of moral authority was as the voice of the white middle-class and the civic virtues that made it possible. They no longer talk about the actual people they used to represent, other than in the occasional genocidal rage. Jason Lee Steorts can’t even describe middle-class civic institutions. He has reduced them to the ridiculous image of a “freedom shrine.” The Buckleyites no longer have moral authority. They are simply another blemish on the face of the Progressive orthodoxy.

How aware of this they are is hard to know. It’s a lucrative racket so they are probably more concerned about keeping their spot on the Left than these larger matters. Perhaps like the Polish authorities, they will just stand aside as a new opposition movement, this counter-culture, grows up to challenge the Left. Perhaps there will be that moment of clarity that Moldylocks experienced as she hit the pavement. Either way, they are morally and spiritually exhausted. What comes next is inevitable.

Trent Denton is correct. I have posted here before that everyone associated with the alt-right or the new-right should read VSB and Field Negro in order to get a grip on what Black America is thinking and feeling, and particularly the degree to which many blacks hate whites simply because they are white. VSB is particularly depressing because the comment section there is largely populated by educated, literate, articulate, professional blacks. One would assume that this demographic would have found some appreciation for the system in which they have thrived. One would be wrong. The Field Negro website is just… Read more »

I did not say they were smart. One of the points of irony in the website is the intellectual mediocrity of the writing at a website called verysmartbrothas. Most of the posts are little more than rambling diatribes with liberal doses of “ass” and “fuck” as unnecessary modifiers. Here’s an example of a quality essay produced by VSB: http://verysmartbrothas.com/five-perfectly-practical-reasons-why-yall-need-to-stop-inviting-every-random-ass-white-person-to-the-cookout/ The author is a fast-rising start in lefty political circles and receives invitations to speak at universities up and down the East Coast. It’s an embarrassment, but I guess I am judging it from a white perspective. My bad. In the… Read more »

I think he meant “resistance on the Left” to you people” … didn’t he? Doesn’t make sense.

In any case, maybe that is where Obozo stashed all his Fed arms and ammo for the supposed Departments to quell the uprising of the crazy right wingers. We still need an accounting of just what and where all that shit went.

I think he was saying that there have been two branches of “the resistance” and that the right wing branch is faltering, but the left wing branch is strengthening. Then he goes on to extol the planning and strategy of a black web site you’ve never heard of and says to be very afraid. If I wasn’t already on the pot I would have pissed in my pants the fear has so engulfed me. I can hardly type this, my hands are shaking so. Gotta wipe now. Hope I don’t get it all over my hands,

The “Resistance” is a yipping Poodle — it thinks it sounds all big and bad until some gets fed up with it and punts it to the curb.

You and the rest of your ilk better hope our patience and tolerance with your B.S. doesn’t wear out.At the rate you are pushing it will wear out soon. When it does we will bare the Iron Hand and squash you and all your “Resistance” comrades like a fly.

Okay, since we mentioned IQ again, I’m going to play Devil’s Advocate again with this sample IQ question: Find two words, one from each group, that are the closest in meaning: Group A talkative, job, ecstatic Group B angry, wind, loquacious a. talkative and wind b. job and angry c. talkative and loquacious d. ecstatic and angry Answer: c. Talkative and Loquacious Now how is some hoodrat, or an immigrant, or a child of immigrants, or a poor white kid supposed to know what the word loquacious means? I have a masters degree and a professional doctorate-level degree and I… Read more »

For starters, I’ve known two people in the ghetto named “Loquacious.” Second, there are exams that do not rely on English proficiency. The Raven’s Progressive Matrices are an obvious example. Even so, the size of one’s vocabulary does correlate to IQ.

The Raven’s tests are very, very good. They come in several flavors, targeted for different IQ ranges. Although the results seem accurate in the highest tier, however, it should be noted that IQ is almost impossible to measure with any degree of resolution above 190. There simply aren’t enough peers around to judge and validate the accuracy.

This is too long to get into here, but there is a difference between your raw intellect and the techniques they use to measure it. IQ is only one data point. It may or may not necessarily mean anything alone, YMMV.

I have studied it both through reading and life experience. Besides, you can poke holes in virtually everything else that is “scientific,” especially when it comes to the mental functioning of a human being, but suddenly IQ is gospel? So I guess any time I hear psychobabble, I shouldn’t question that, either?

Ok Tempo, I’m your Huckleberry. I’ve said here before that while IQ measures intelligence, that is not the only measure of a person. To me, CHARACTER, is much more meaningful issue. You look at the world today and you have a such a quandary of things good and bad. You have contributions from great minds to mankind and society and yet you have the likes of Tyrants, Despicables in Brussels, and the NWO, etc., and even the crony capitalism in the good ‘ol USofA trying to destroy the world in order to rebuild it in their desired image, all for… Read more »

There is a lot of truth to what you posted, but my point is still that IQ is still just an estimate based on one set of assumptions and as the old phrase goes, garbage in, garbage out. The inputs that go into determining IQ are a lot like church doctrine about Christianity where they say if you’ve been exposed to Christianity and don’t accept the teachings, then you’re condemned. But if you’re not exposed to Christianity, I guess God looks the other way. The fact that someone is around people who use words like loquacious in their everyday conversations… Read more »

But what I am saying that it doesn’t always correlate. Take an immigrant child like me. Where am I going to hear the word loquacious used in everyday conversation when I’m around people who can barely speak English. That’s why these IQ tests, to a certain degree, are garbage in, garbage out.

The Left, cowards as they are, will never quit. They will contract and recruit ideologically amoral mercs to do their dirty work. The hired muscle will just shrug with indifference while cajoled by progs to fight for diversity and Gaia. They are in it for the plunder and power to gained.They will bide their time like Hitler before he did in Ernst Röhm, and Stalin took the mantle from the dying Lenin, who in his egghead conceit saw too late what was going to happen. The progs are content to allow the radical Muslims to bring down the pillars of… Read more »

I think one possible outcome is as the neoliberal system becomes unstable, American Progs retreat into a form of tribalism. They coagulate around Prog outposts and begin to demand greater autonomy. Read Prog sites and you see a fair bit of it turning up. The whole CalExit thing is an example.

What do you think the odds are that the CalExit will actually occur? Texas had it written into their agreement to enter the United States that they had the right to leave. And yet, they have not, even though belonging to the US has not been in their interests for sometime now. It takes a powerful shock for people to end their social contract, not just because of some self-righteous perception of themselves. As the Declaration of Independence pointed out, “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all… Read more »

Right now, the chance of success is indeed very low. But time has been compressing quickly of late. People to the right of center are fatigued, and want more than ever to just be left in peace. If sluicing off their tormentors will end the henpecking, they are closer to waving good-bye than you may believe.
Never underestimate the indifference of a tired man. It will be the Left that clings to its object of hate. After all, they want to make you a better man.

The establishment right was always the Washington Generals. Never supposed to win anything. Not even supposed to make it interesting because it was the antics of the left that were supposed to hold our interest. Then a whole new thing happened. The Washington Generals hired ‘Wilt Chamberlain’. Suddenly the focus is no longer on the left. They are getting their shots blocked and getting dunked on like a WNBA team against a high school boys team. It is not their ‘last gasp’, honestly that happened long ago but now the official right finds out somebody else took the court while… Read more »

The Mantra ASIA FOR THE ASIANS, AFRICA FOR THE AFRICANS, WHITE COUNTRIES FOR EVERYBODY! Everybody says there is this RACE problem. Everybody says this RACE problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY white country and ONLY into white countries. The Netherlands and Belgium are just as crowded as Japan or Taiwan, but nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve this RACE problem by bringing in millions of third worlders and quote assimilating unquote with them. Everybody says the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY white country and ONLY white countries to “assimilate,” i.e.,… Read more »

Bob Whitaker passing away is terrible. He was very good at coming up with excellent sayings that showed the bias against Whites. Very good. Here’s a link to some of Bob’s tweets. Gold in these. Have a look. There’s probably at ;east one brilliant come back to most any derogative statement made by a SJW to a White person possible in this page of tweets.

I tried to read, no….rather skim the Moldbug rebuttal, but gave up after Stoert’s came up with this: “Since Moldbug knows perfectly well that his recipe for Singapore could easily turn into a recipe for the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom….” What? It would take too much space and time to fully unpack the idiocy of this statement, but by making it it’s clear that Steorts knows nothing about either Singapore or the Taipings, and is not shy about advertising the fact. Who’s reading this nonsense? My guess is that a few brave souls like Z read it to make sport of… Read more »

Moldylocks is a zombie true believer and has no idea how she came to believe and behave as she does. Hint, it was a gradual indoctrination that began very early in her formative years and has been sustained in near continuous fashion by mass media funneled through a iphone. Steorts is knowing fifth-columnist who is practicing his trade with serious intent and operates under the assumption that he can “convert” the old dogs via the power (and volume) of his words. This is old school Marxist doctrine. Moldylocks will buckle quickly because she has no real foundation. Steorts also has… Read more »

Were earned pride and liberty to become a way of life again, preserving the continental America as it is can have no place in this. It is instead the very reason all roads lead back to the Imperial City. The Founders brainstormed mightily to arrange a system of government that would overcome Montesquieu’s dictum, that a successful republic must be limited in size, and for 72 years they succeed. But the left succeeded in breaking down the peculiar American character that resisted Utopia, through universal suffrage, and then by importing people amenable to their rule due to either being hostile… Read more »

The whole SJW movement has a mayfly on life support quality to it. You take away daddy’s money and the support of the campus administrators, it will die off immediately. The inauguration arrests and prosecutions, the Berkeley riot, and Gamergate all illustrate how quickly the SJWs fold. I dunno, Z man. I’ve run into a couple of bullies in life, who if you make a stand and win, come back the next day with three of their buddies and beat the crap out of you. The bureaucratic bullies all seem to fall into that category. But you gotta fight for… Read more »

It’s really embarrassing for them that Steorts is such a terrible writer. I guess you don’t have to be a really good writer to be an editor but you’d expect at least some minimal competence. Someone who’s job it is to pare down other’s writing ought to be able to express himself in blocks of less that 10,000 words.

His writing reminds me of JFK Jr, who was the editor of “George” in the 1990’s. He ‘wrote’ a page of unreadable garbage at the beginning of that mag – hey maybe Jason was ghosting for him. 👻

It’s not that he’s a terrible writer (which he is) it’s that he’s a terrible thinker. For example: “More specifically, consider the maxim that government should be “of the people, by the people, for the people,” in Lincoln’s pleasingly parallel phrase. This means, I take it, that citizens should have equal standing to participate in representative government under laws equally applied to all. Let’s call this, the pith of the American idea, “procedural liberalism.”” I always thought that of the people, by the people and for the people meant that the people were in charge, that they could not only… Read more »

The procedural liberalism he’s talking about is a theory of law and government that underlies a lot of political thinking. I think Hamilton could be said to have subscribed to it because of his objections to amending the constitution with a bill of rights. The idea is that freedoms and rights are inherent in the processes of law that our lives percolate through. As long as those processes remain intact, the fundamental rights in here within them. The problem with this is that the adherents of this particular faith don’t seem to get that when you have bad people in… Read more »

For a long time, the Buckleyites have been in love with the idea that they are a means justifies the end ideology, while their friends on the Left are an ends justify the means ideology. I recall Jonah Goldberg going on at length in the 90’s, I think, it could have been during the Bush reign of terror. It was a big deal for them. My suspicion was that it was in furtherance of the “freedom agenda” stuff, which argued that democracy in the Arab world would turn the Middle East into Vermont. This is a Talmudic corruption of Montesquieu,… Read more »

That’s a great quote to pull up because because it demonstrates not only that he can not read but that he desperately needs an editor himself (how much more throat clearing can be packed into only three sentences).

What does this guy got where they have to keep him around as they fire all their talented people?

Steorts seems unaware that his goofy formulation has excised Lincoln’s “of the people” and “for the people” from the constitution of the American government and its purpose. Fittingly, Steorts reduces Lincoln’s formula to a mechanism for the endorsement an elitist Mandarinate more or less hostile to the little people whose sole purpose it seems is to confer it some kind of legitimacy. I’m sure that such a formula is appealing to Steorts, as he imagines himself a deserving member and mouthpiece for a governing class comprised more or less of Ivy League twits and homosexuals such as himself.

[Moldbug] and neo-reaction were a big deal on-line a decade ago… addressing it now in a serious way is [stupid]. What his post reveals, more than anything, is that he and the rest of the Buckley Mystery Cult have not been paying attention for a long time. Disagree strongly. First, neoreaction was unknown 10 years ago, and certainly had little interest outside of its tiny intellectual ghetto on the net. This has changed, slightly, only because progressives will always look for the most far-out stuff for their two-minutes hates. Of course for the most part they are intellectually mediocre (at… Read more »

I’m sure there are still a few Moldbug fans around, but that whole thing is as dead as disco. The exact date of is death is not a debate worth having. Frankly, I think the neo-reaction guys had some good observations and some useful framing, but otherwise they were mostly wrong.

Z-man, Moldbug may be dead as disco but a Good Editor could take his grave filled with the corpus of his writing, a giant moldering trove of unorganized, dense, opaque prose, and produce a few crystal clear Tom Paine like pamphlets to proselytize for the Alt Right.

It would require a herculean effort to tease out a pamphlet from Moldbug. The guy literally wrote 10,000 word posts that could be boiled down to 1,000 words. There was always a dorm room bong session to his stuff.

Socialmatter.net is the clearinghouse for Moldburg’s successors. They do a weekly roundup of postings from various fellow travellers. Not quite dead as disco, but their influence outside their own circle seems almost non-existent

Nick Land links to me on occasion. I don’t think any other NRx types read me, but I don’t know. I think there is some overlap between my thing and their thing, but I’m way outside their orbit with regards to history, culture and science.

It’s kind of weird how the NRx stuff sort of disappeared. Even though I was not a big fan, I could see that being a gateway drug to alt-right and traditionalism.

Moldbug was certainly correct about the Matrix sequels proving that accidental genius is real. The romanticism for Moldbug is contextual. Every former progressive, whether they call themselves NRx, alt-[whatever], traditionalist, got red-pilled at some point. For me and a lot of other people he was the first dissident philosopher I’d ever read. And as far as what was available in 2007 he was about the only game in town.

I wouldn’t recommend him as a starting place for any recovering progressive today. But his historical contribution to the awakening was very real.

It’s probably generational. I came of age in the 80’s when guys like Pat Buchanan, Paul Gottfried, Joe Sobran and Sam Francis were still in their prime years. In the 80’s, Bill Buckley would still make the case that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was a mistake, at least obliquely.

I find it interesting that you think he was the portal through which Progressives moved into the out dark of dissident politics.

I think Sailer analyzed the Matrix movies better. His theories about giving in to your inner demons is spot on. Once they indulged their kinks and fetishes they lost the ability and energy to harness their talent.

While ‘moldylocks’ getting decked (funny video, BTW) made them take pause, it was trying these stunts in New Orleans, Dallas, Arkansas and SC that really squelched them – where the cops didn’t ‘stand down’ and in fact would bust them for violating ‘anti-mask’ ordinances (ironically, designed to thwart the KKK). The word getting out that these idiots might get hauled off to jail, as well as getting roughed up, that calmed them down.

This is curious to me because I am on the lookout for the various right factions and the only way to find them is when they reveal themselves in some declarative manner like making a blog post or showing up at a rally with a Trump shirt. Its easier to know what ideas resonate with you than to identify with a group. As far as groups go I am more interested in what the young conservatives are up to than whatever a Buckley Conservative is.

“genocidal rage”? Oh come on. David French and Kevin Williamson
were right to pour out some contempt on white trash who have reacted to adversity with drug usage, promiscuity, and other habits of the downward bound. You’re reading your own fears into remarks like “The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die”. If there is any homicidal rage in that, it’s in terms of class, not race.

It is rage. The sheer level of hate aimed at the white blue collars . You don’t see it aimed at Muslims, Blacks or any other group that is actively tearing down this country. In fact these same people welcome in all the dregs of the 3rd world. It’s race and class based. As for the “white trash” they weren’t that 30 years ago. Back then their towns and local communities were healthy and people employed. But then came along NAFTA supported by all the urban good whites and the crowd at the NR and GOP. Then bam!! entire towns… Read more »

The Lefties should back off from Trump and let him do his work. Any kind of real rural economic revival is likely to be slow and incremental. The real Right is very intolerant of failure to deliver on promises, and Trump has made big implied and explicit promises here. If by chance he does deliver, and rural economic revival is quick and real, all the better for everyone. Of course, the Lefties would find some sort of unfairness in it. They are the sort who could get a free meal, and then complain that the delicious steak offends a vegan… Read more »

“The thing is though, the whole Antifa movement seems to have fallen apart after that event.” It’s hormonal. It’s June. Mid to late April or May next year they’ll come out again. They always do. It’s like an annual mating call. They are mostly on summer vacation now sitting by the beach drinking Mai Tais that their parents bought.

“No plan survives contact with the enemy.” That thought was usually attributed to Dwight David Eisenhower. Or did Napoleon say it? George Patton perhaps? No one seemed sure. The observation actually originated with Helmuth Von Moltke in the mid-nineteenth century.http://www.ralphkeyes.com/quote-verifier/

I looked at that verysmartniggas site. He does have a way with words in a sort of, neo-street-enlightened-black-bourgeois-revolution sort of way. But the commentary lacks anything resembling intellectual substance. It’s just a better worded form of racial poo flinging than you’d find from those screeching fat BLM women on American campuses.

“Middlemarch” was torture. Page after page, chapter after chapter and I still have no idea if anything happened. Of course, that was more than three decades ago, in college. I still have the book, sitting up on my bookshelf.